Difference between revisions of "Team:Korea U Seoul/HP/Gold"

Introduction

In Korea, many biologically-related affairs occurred like the cases above. Many interpretation can exists, explaining the reason behind the cause of the affairs, but we thought of 2 major reasons.

• Lack of measures and laws related to biotechnology
• Lack of Korean society’s interest to biotechnology

We, as IGEMers, thought of solutions to solve these problems.

Seminar on Strategy for National Defense Against Biothreat

Objective

The seminar insisting the policy motion covering the preparation for potential threat of biotechnology was held in the Republic of Korean Parliamentarian Society. Korea_U_Seoul participated this seminar, and could gain new insights on how bio-related-technologies can be misused threatfully.

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• As a policy maker, even elder statesmen of the National Assembly were not informed about the mechanism of bio-terrorism and the spread of infectious diseases.
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• Despite the political status of divided country in the middle of ceasefire, Korea is not enough prepared for biological threats.
  • Lack of legislations and presidential organization
  • Non-existence of integrated system for biological crisis and bio-terrorism prevention
  • Inadequacy of being well-informed of foreign public health crises cases
  • Lack of continuousness in supporting system and manpower
  • Unclear command and control system
  • Shortage in specialists and related supplies
  • Lack of surveillance and preventive discipline at immigration office for dangerous areas visitors and residences
  • Overpopulation of the emergency room: sudden patient increase in capital area located medical institutions
  • Lack of citizen awareness

This seminar was executed with the purpose of improving above mentioned problems.

The difference exists between domestic and overseas bio-management system.
• As the first step of solving these problems, we searched on research management system / bio-management system related to bioethics and research ethics.
• Second, by hearing advises of experts from each field and gathering them, we desired to make a source book which can be used as a reference in policy making
• Third, we tried to contact the policy manager to deliver our opinion on this project
• Fourth, we desired the positive change in Korea’s biotechnology / synthetic biology management policy

We proceeded through the first step, but failed in hearing advises from experts, so we revised our plan.

• Limitation of professionalism – the fact that we were new to this field
• Lack of awareness and interest of specialists
• Communication problems with specialists

BUT, we refused to give up. We came up with plan B.

In order to provide an efficient system, active discussion among general public is necessary. Therefore, Korea_U_Seoul decided to set our sights on bringing about public concern and discussion on ongoing matters synthetic biology / biotechnology is facing.

Communication

As a first step of being a synthetic biologist who directly communicates with society rather than merely researching in a laboratory, we tried to interact with general public by educating and publicizing on synthetic biology.

In order to accomplish above mentioned objective, we selected the theme of ethical issues synthetic biology / biotechnology is currently facing.